


Cast It Out

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic John Winchester, Angry John Winchester, Bad Parent John Winchester, Bobby Singer to the Rescue, Child Neglect, Gen, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort, John Winchester Being an Asshole, Possessed John Winchester, Protective Bobby Singer, Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester in Trouble, Sick Sam Winchester, Unhealthy Relationships, attempted drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22454845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Sam is sick with the flu when a hunt comes up, and Dean has to argue with John for Sam to be left behind to recover.But John stays behind too, apparently to look after his ailing son.Sam soon finds out that hisdadhas other plans.
Relationships: Bobby Singer & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer & John Winchester, Dean Winchester & John Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 144
Collections: Supernatural Anon Kink Meme





	Cast It Out

Dean’s fighting with their dad.

That doesn’t happen a whole hell of a lot; it’s not that Sam’s enjoying the idea of Dean confronting the leader of their scruffy, broken down _pack_ , but it’s a rare enough spectacle (and one that gives Sam a little hope for Dean, but, maybe selfishly, more for himself) that he manages to at least tumble out of bed and crawl the few feet to the bedroom door to listen.

The voices are still muffled, so he figures they’re in Bobby’s den, but he makes out his name and realises Dean’s more begging, persuading, than arguing.

Still, he knows what it’s about, and then it all goes quiet, until he hears someone coming up the stairs.

He recognises the tread, but it’s too late to even attempt the marathon distance between the door and the bed, hasn’t even managed to turn around before Dean’s staring down at him in a mix of annoyance, frustration and worry.

“Dude. You drop a contact or what?”

Sam manages to give him the finger, and then Dean hauls him half upright and drags him across the room before stuffing him back under the covers.

Sam holds still while Dean shoves a thermometer under his tongue, scowling when he goes to ask a question and then gets told to keep his big ol’ mouth shut and then his brother glances at the glass tube.

And frowns.

“It’s better. Not great. You’re still sick as a mutt left out in the rain, Sammy. Do not get out of bed. For anything less than a vampire attack or a thousand bucks. Okay?”

That kind of answers one of his questions.

“So.” Shit, his voice sounds like he sings nightly in some smoky jazz club somewhere and then drinks his feelings away until dawn. “Dad’s okay with me not going.”

Dean makes a face because he has to figure Sam’s less than comfy spot on the floor meant he was listening.

“Bobby’s coming with me, we can handle it.”

Wait. With _me_?

“Where the hell is dad gonna be?”

Dean cracks open a bottle of water, and pushes it at him. “Will you start drinking this? I didn’t haul a crate of it up from the basement for exercise. Dad is gonna be here. Looking after your dumb, sick little ass.”

Great. That is probably the worst of the scenarios running through Sam’s mind. 

Dean would never have got to stay, he knows that; John’s had him out hunting with fevers and broken bones and a concussion once, even when he had unstitched wounds.

Sam’s done more of his fair share of arguing on his brother’s behalf, but it never helped that Dean always just picked up a gun and dragged himself out of the door.

Bobby, Sam would have been okay with; he knew the old guy would just have tossed some medicine down his throat and left him be, probably checking in once or twice to make sure he hadn’t smothered himself with a pillow or something.

Sam would even have been fine alone. Getting to the bathroom, okay, he’d have figured that one out, but he’d have managed.

Having his dad here….

“Fuck.”

“Hey. Don’t knock the attention.”

Sam glowers at his brother. The attention would be fine if he wasn’t sure that every single moment of it will be grudged. John wants to be out there on the hunt, doing their _job_ , riding into town like three road weary warriors and saving the day from predatory demons, vicious werewolves and laying evil ghosts to rest.

Taking no thanks, just leaving as fast as they arrived, like some supernatural version of the A-Team.

Sam knows his dad will find a way to make him feel like he’s shirking up here, some kind of weak willed malingerer, letting him down, letting Dean down (because look, Sam, now your brother is off on a hunt and we’re not there!) and letting down everybody who might be getting throats ripped out while he’s trying to get over the flu.

“I’m coming with you,” he says. Because being cold and shivering and miserable while trying to salt and burn some remains is so far preferable to being here with his dad stomping around and cleaning guns and telling people loudly on the phone that they can’t come on a job right now because one of his boys is _sick_.

“Like hell,” Dean says. “You can’t even stand up. What’s the problem? You used to hate it when Dad left us alone.”

Sam huffs at him. No, Dean hated it when their dad left them alone. Sam got used to it because it had been happening since he was old enough to remember. Sam just hated that he was never back when he said he’d be, and he never seemed to leave enough money for food and, more than a few times, for the room.

He won’t forget or forgive that one manager who kicked the two of them out of the motel when it was starting to snow (at least, Sam supposes, he didn’t call Child Services because he and Dean would likely have been separated) and that was how their dad found then when he came back later that night, huddled together for warmth at a bus stop.

Anyway, he’s not a kid now. Hasn’t been for a long time, even if Dean seems to forget that.

Dean seems a little put out by his attitude, but Sam’s sick of his. He’s their dad’s little sidekick, his soldier, the good son, and sometimes he just wants to grab Dean by the ears and shake him until he comes to his senses.

But he knows he’ll never get the _Stepford Son_ out of Dean, no matter what he does.

Dean reaches out to ruffle his hair; Sam jerks away, hating himself as he does it, looking away but still catching the hurt that flashes briefly across his brother’s face before Dean hurriedly buries it again.

“Fine. Drink the damn water. And do me a favour, do not sass him.”

Then he’s gone, and Sam hears one of the trucks starting up, and he listens as things get quieter again.

They don’t stay that way for long.

He hears John stomping up the stairs, and the door opens and his dad looks in. He stares at him for a moment, looking him over, and Sam thinks he sees some actual concern there.

Then the door closes over a little, and he realises his dad is on the phone. 

“Yeah, we’re not gonna make it, Daly. One of my boys is in bed sick. Try Simon or Ruth’s kids. They’re reliable, they’ll help you out.”

Sam pounds his pillow under it’s flattened out, even that exhausting him, and then collapses down until he finally falls asleep.

++

He wakes up to the sound of water running.

And he’s cold.

Like, really cold, and then he sees why.

He’s lying on the tiled floor in Bobby’s bathroom, wearing just his sleep pants and undershirt, and he has no idea how he got there.

But he’s not alone.

Coming to fully takes a minute, but then he sees John standing by the bathtub, running the taps….no, one of the taps and even from there, Sam can see it’s the cold one.

“Dad?” He sounds even worse than before, has to swallow hard a few times to get his voice working. “What’s going on?”

He doesn’t get an answer. Maybe he never said anything. He feels out of it, and maybe he’s spiked a temperature and his dad’s thinking about a cold bath to bring it down.

Great. 

Sam feels his cheeks tinge with embarrassment. His dad must have carried him down here, and now he’s going to have to practically lift him and dump him in.

He manages to push himself up, arms wobbling, thinking if he can at least get onto his knees he can maybe avoid the humiliation of having to be helped.

His dad already thinks he’s a lazy ass weakling, Sam knows it, and he could manage without this cementing the notion.

Even if he knows he shouldn’t care, because pleasing their father requires absolute unquestioning obedience, complete perfection and never quitting.

Shame John doesn’t live by his own rules, but in that moment it’s about Sam’s pride more than anything which gets hurt near as bad as the rest of him when his arms give out and he thumps hard back to the floor.

He glances his head off the tiles, and groans as his stomach knots painfully.

But he isn’t sick, thank fuck.

And his dad….

John never even turns around.

“Dad?”

Sam knows something’s wrong before John turns off the tap. The way he straightens up; not the angry, rigid, C.O way of moving he usually has, but something slower, like he’s unfurling, almost.

He doesn’t know, but it reminds Sam of a big snake, slowly flexing and shifting, all muscle beneath those lethal coils as it gets ready to attack.

“Dad.”

Then John does turn around, and Sam knows he’s in big trouble.

++

Bobby sometimes wonders what the hell he did for those Winchesters to come into his life.

He’s probably no one to talk, given his history, but that’s a fucked up family if ever he saw one.

John…. He supposes he grudgingly considers the guy a friend, of sorts, but he’s a total _ass_ , fetching up when he feels like it.

Not so much dumping those boys on him now they’re grown, mostly, but still just pulling in and acting like his, Bobby’s, place, is some kind of hunter hotel.

Okay, he can’t deny, he keeps beds made for Dean and Sam, and tries to keep the food and beer they like stocked up, because he’s pretty sure they get next to nothing when they’re out on the road.

It’s something he’s been doing for years, even since he realised he’d been seeing them on his doorstep a whole lot, and got fed up of how hungry they always were (Dean in particular) and wearing clothes with holes in them and missing important immunisations and holy shit, if they lived mainstream, those boys would have been taken from John long ago.

So maybe he isn’t as pissed at them dumping themselves on him as and when they please.

The boys, anyway.

His boys.

And while he’s only driving back so soon because Dean worried about Sam and also didn’t want Bobby taking on a geist by himself (Bobby ought to thrash his hide for that one, he’s not _old_ ), he’s concerned himself.

John’s not exactly the take your temperature and tuck you in type, and okay, neither is he, but he at least would make sure Sam didn’t break his neck trying to get out of bed because he needed to pee and that he didn’t choke on his own vomit...

He pulls up outside the yard, expecting to find Sam asleep and John either drunk (he better not be, Bobby doesn’t keep his booze cabinet stocked so Papa Winchester can pickle his liver faster) or angrily pretending his youngest son isn’t upstairs and sick.

But he doesn’t find John in the den. Or the kitchen. Or down in the basement. 

He figures that leaves upstairs, so maybe he is checking on Sam after all.

Except Sam’s room is empty, the bedclothes in a tangle on the floor, the carpet rucked up.

Bobby moves a little faster then, starting to get a bad feeling, and there’s not exactly a lot of places in his house they can be.

The next bedroom is empty, as is his own, and that just leaves the attic, and the bathroom.

He’s about to knock on the door when he hears a heavy thump, and the sound of water sloshing around, and a gargled noise.

And opens the door.

++

Sam can’t breathe. He claws at his dad’s wrists, his arms, tries to reach up to get his face, but he can’t and where he does leave bloody, desperate scratches, it makes no difference at all.

Whatever has his dad (how, how how) it’s unflinching and strong. It’s keeping him pinned to the bottom of the tub, and all his fighting and kicking and trying to scream his dad’s name because the air in his lungs is almost gone, there’s no point trying to hold on to it, is for nothing.

He’s going to die in this bathtub, drowned by his dad and whatever is riding him, and then Bobby and Dean will come home and find him and he doesn’t know what will happen then.

For a moment, though, Sam swears he hears someone yell his name, and then something hits John hard over the head.

Sam doesn’t know what, but blood drips into the water.

His dad doesn’t let go though, and Sam can feel himself slipping under.

And then there’s a terrific thud as John hits the floor, and hands reach into the cold water and grab him and haul him up.

Sam’s body doesn’t seem to remember how to breathe, then, until somebody pounds him hard on the back and he coughs and chokes and splutters, and drapes himself over the side of the bath.

“You’re okay, Sam,” Bobby says. “You’re okay. Now what the hell is going on, here?”

++

Near as they can figure, somewhere over the past three or four hunts, John picked up a kind of water sprite. 

One that liked to drown people, but John’s never been alone with any of them before Sam got sick, and weak enough for it to overpower him. 

And then it saw its chance and took it.

Cleansing their dad of the sprite took nearly two days, but then Bobby had it bottled up and buried it out back under the wreck of a side impacted Pinto.

He tacks its location on the map in the den, and then watches John stare weakly at his boys.

Yeah, he’s ashamed, and Bobby knows he should be sympathetic. Getting ridden by stuff is a hazard of the job, and tattoos and protective amulets don’t always do the job they’re meant to, but this time around John nearly killed one of his boys.

It’s just that Bobby knows if it had been Sam or Dean, they’d be getting ripped into for their carelessness even if it wasn’t anybody’s fault.

Besides, he doesn’t think this will change John’s treatment of his sons one little bit.

He isn’t wrong. Sam’s barely on his feet before John orders their bags packed and them both in the car.

There’s a demon sighting in New Hampshire and he wants them there pronto.

Dean helps Sam to the car, and Bobby follows, glaring a little at their dad.

“You need anything,” he says. 

Sam nods. He seeks a hug from Bobby and he gets one, and Bobby ignores when John honks the horn, impatient to be underway.

“Anything,” he says, again. “You or Dean. Even if I need to come to you.”

Sam grins, but there’s something under it that tells Bobby John better be careful. 

Sam isn’t like Dean, hasn’t made keeping John pleased, seeking his affirmation, his be all and end all.

He’s going to drive that boy away and, while there’s part of him that hopes Sam does get out, there’s a part that fears for who he’ll leave behind.

He watches them pull away, and goes back inside.

Like most of the shit that goes on in this world, there’s not a whole lot he can do about it.


End file.
